Job Opportunity for Programme Manager – Urban Initiatives at Azim Premji Foundation in Chennai

Programme Manager – Urban Initiatives

Location: Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad.

Grant making in Azim Premji Foundation

At the Foundation, we make multi-year grants to not-for-profit organisations that work with the most vulnerable in our society. Through such support, people who are deeply disadvantaged and marginalised are offered immediate care, access to essential services, and the possibility of a dignified future.

About the Role

Urban poverty affects many people living in the cities. The urban poor lack access to decent work wherein most of the migrant’s population find work in the informal sector, they often live in informal settlements or slums or are also homeless.

Through our Grants work in Urban Initiatives portfolio, we support civil society organisations as partners with multi-year grants to improve the lives of the urban poor by:

• Facilitating safe migration, collectivising workers, improving their access to social security and public services, and addressing labour rights violations through mediation and legal aid.
• Improving their access to civic amenities, enhancing community participation in urban governance and strengthening community level collectives.
• Building an ecosystem to support homeless people in need of care and protection by proving food, shelter, medical and psycho-social care.

The Program Manager would manage our intervention under the Urban Initiatives portfolio identifying potential partners (civil society organizations) by working specifically under the themes Migrants and Informal Sector, Informal Settlements and Homeless and by making grants.

Responsibilities

• Identify potential partners within the specific geography.
• Ensure compliance with specific grant proposals so that they meet the Foundation’s guidelines and requirements, and are a well-drafted request, complete in all aspects
• Review all completed proposals to ensure that required information has been provided. Ensure that the story of the grantee organisation comes through clearly.
• Lead the efforts on the due diligence process and partner engagement from both programme and finance lens.
• Help the partner develop results frameworks and ensure that the thinking around the results framework is in keeping with the operating plan.
• Post approval, provide support to the partners to ensure that the financial resources reach them in time.
• Ensure compliance with the grant making system through the entire lifecycle of a grant.
• Manage the disbursal of grants within the organisation in an individual capacity.
• Initiate relationships with research think tanks and civil society organisations in order to further the organisation’s understanding of an area within the geography.

What We Are Looking For

• Candidates with 10 to 18 years of experience in the development sector are preferred. Interested candidates with more experience should also apply.
• Candidates who are passionate and have worked in the areas of labour rights, informal settlements, and with homeless people are also encouraged to apply.
• Should have collaborated across multiple teams and have had accountability for large goals in his/her previous assignments.
• Grant-making and program budgeting experience strongly preferred.
• High level of self-motivation, initiative, and creativity.
• Willingness to travel extensively for work.
• Substantial knowledge of organisational and project management.
• Ability to work with minimal supervision and solve problems independently or collaboratively as needed.